Tong says ‘my mission was to create a legacy for dance music for future generations’

“My team and I all sat down in January and there was an air of disbelief in a positive way about how well it had done,” he says.

“The project had evolved through natural momentum.

“It had started with an invite to create a BBC prom show and the result of that was we got back together to do three arena shows at the end of last year. Then we got a record deal and that’s when this started.”

For Tong the record deal was a chance to experience being the focus rather than just a DJ.

“We also made some decisions about which road to go down and the hardest thing was not repeating ourselves. As much as I love the first album, I think this sounds even bigger and even more like a band.

“There was time during the promotional cycle where people would say they didn’t know if they were listening to the original version. We did such a good job.

“Like Lola’s Theme on the first album, people couldn’t tell the difference between our version and the original. That is a nice flattering thing, but that is exactly what we had to change.

“We’ve got to do them in a way that they are different. I’ve got big names Craig David and Seal on there but new people too. You Don’t Know Me was a song that I signed with Armand Van Helden. It was a number one in 1999.

“We could only do this track if we found a singer who could really do it and I thought about Craig David who could give it a different flavour, a classic UK urban sound. He’s the real deal and a total pro. His instrument is his voice.

“Then with Seal I’ve got to know him over the years.

“The song Killer became one of the album’s biggest challenges. How do we change it?

“We tried to do it acoustically at the start but we’ve come up with a version that’s probably more honourable to the original. Seal reminded us that the album version had an ambient beginning. So on the album we’ve got this beautiful classical string piece at the start. Then it burst into life.

“I went back to The Chemical Brothers and I talked to them, they were really into it. I still had to get some original parts from them, then we worked on the arrangement.

“The question was who is going to do the rap on Galvanize? I thought about Q-Tip coming back and doing it. But, again, it’s like, what’s the point? Because he did the original.

“I thought about Skepta and Stormzy, but they are so hot. Then I thought of Rejjie Snow who was just breaking through and he’s got more feet in the UK rap scene rather than UK grime.

“I went to Liam Howlett to get his permission to do The Prodigy’s Out Of Space. I called up (radio reggae DJ) David Rodigan and I asked him to give me some names I can go to look at and he suggested Assassin.”